1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of pollen-based geolocation, and more particularly, to a method for determining the geographic history of a target of interest using pollen-based geolocation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an increasingly interconnected world, there is a need to quickly and efficiently track the geographic origin or travel history of an item. A pollen-based geolocation system is one way to accomplish this goal since distinct geographic locations typically possess unique pollen profiles. Forensic palynology, for example, is the study of pollen to determine the geographic location an item might have originated from or traveled through, as well as when it might have done so. Forensic palynology is often used by law enforcement to gather evidence about certain types of crimes.
A robust pollen-based geolocation algorithm can be used for numerous applications including: (i) tracking the travel history of a person or item; (ii) determining the point of origin of a person or item; and (iii) estimating the approximate date or time of year that an object was in a geographic location, among others.
Prior pollen-based geolocation methods have relied on complicated numeration-based algorithms that are qualitative, rather than quantitative, in nature. Additionally, prior methods have been unable to resolve the problem of spatial dependence of neighboring locations in which locations that are geographically close to each other have similar distributions of plant species.